I covered this the first time I bought the site 6 years ago. I'll cover it again and since we're all investors here and understand business realities better than most people, I'll be callously blunt and trust nobody will take offense.
First, understand that since the site is owned by a different company now, it has no obligation to even honor the lifetime memberships that came with it. And that was just as true the first time I bought it in 2003 and when ADVFN bought it in 2006. Were I not continually involved since then, I think it's a safe bet lifetime memberships would've gone away or gotten an expiration date.
Whether that would stand a court test, I don't know or care. I always intend and intended to honor lifetime memberships even though I or my company didn't get the money for them.
There seems to be a difference in definitions here as to what "Lifetime Membership" means.
To some, it means no ads, and access to all future features the site rolls out, no matter what they are. Well, maybe not no matter what. There's a gray line. I've heard nobody complain that they don't get the realtime for free that's now available with the data products.
To others, it means your account will have the same accesses and privileges it had when you bought the lifetime membership or were grandfathered into it as many of us were.
I'm in the latter camp and so are most lifers and here's why.
Silicon Investor is both hobby/avocation/passion and business.
Without being a viable business, it can't exist. I don't think anyone can argue with that. And it's just as true now as ever and perhaps more so, because I have no intention to sell it again, ever. But I'm also not a wealthy philanthropist. Altruism was a huge factor in this acquisition, but there are bills to be paid and I can only pay them personally for so long.
So, put yourself on my side of the equation. Just paid a bunch of money to buy the site and even if I could afford to run it for free and not worry about it paying its own way, I wouldn't. I'm not wired that way. And frankly, I can't afford to support it out of my own pockets forever or even for very long.
Now let's look at lifetime accounts.
As one of you/us, I appreciate the fact that a lot of people have been loyal to the site for so many years and some of them even still talk about stocks, which is where a lot of our income was and will be. Stock discussion begets more stock discussion, which brings in readers who found us via word of mouth or a search engine.
A lot of people are loyal not so much to the site but enjoy the verbal sparring over politics they've been doing for years. Discussion that doesn't put a dime in the coffers. But, as with any other members and the posts they write and read, they add up to a not inconsequential cost in terms of bandwidth and computing horsepower. Neither of which is free or even inexpensive.
To be very blunt, from a business perspective, I knew in both instances that lifetime members, especially ones who only talk politics, are an albatross around the site's neck.
To be even more blunt, but in a way that surely anyone who understands business enough to even be here can relate to and can't fault me for, once I bought the site in 03 and finally got to see just how much of the membership was comprised of people who had paid the Dryers or Go2Net or InfoSpace or had been grandfathered in, and that I felt should be entitled to continue using the site without being required to pay me for it, I had to figure out a way to dip into their pockets for a little help. Plain and simple.
Though I have been and continue to be very grateful to the stock-talking loyal members because stock-related content is the site's bread and butter.
But content alone and the ads that free members see with them don't pay the bills on their own. And content that's political and is of no interest to free members, so there's no ad revenue to be made there, does help keep the posting volume up, but doesn't put a penny in the bank, let alone reimburse the bandwidth and computing horsepower costs.
So, I saw pretty quickly that if I could come up with a way to dip into the pockets of Lifetime members, and in a way that gave them lots of value for low cost so that lots of people would go for it, the dead albatross could become a live eagle that helps carry the weight even more than my most optimistic expectation.
So I created a set of features the site hadn't had previously, called them "Premium Plus", and offered them to Lifers for a nominal fee.
And there are a lot of takers. The Premium plus 1-year and 5-year are by far the most numerous subscriptions we have. And I know from talking to people that a lot of them bought the P+ not so much for the features themselves but because they knew it had to do with the site's viability as a business and were glad to help.
Even people who have bought Lifetime memberships at a time they were paying me for it, still only got P+ for a year with it.
Pay once and never pay again is a severely poisonous business model. Brad and Jeff knew it long ago but sold to a company who couldn't see that writing on the wall right about when they were going to move to the recurring/expiring kinds of subscriptions.
Regarding advanced search, remember, I've been around here just about as long as anyone else. Prior to my version of it, advanced search existed only briefly when one of the Seattle-based parent companies rolled it out.
It was yanked in VERY short time because the cost of running it was enormous.
It's still a very costly feature, but it and the ability to read in larger batches and even by author are often cited as reasons people opt to pony up the nominal charge for the P+ addition.
I hope I didn't muddy it up with too many words.
But the bottom line is that the P+ account is a very important revenue stream, and there is simply no changing my mind on charging for it, so it's really a waste of time to even try.
As a fan of the site and long-time member of the community, sure, it'd be nice if I could make it free.
As the businessman who must make this a self-supporting business again, and whose own funds get depleted while it's not, it just ain't gonna happen and that is all there is to it.
Necessity is a mother. |
